I received an e-mail the other day from a business that specializes in helping people get rid of stuff they don’t want any more.
The e-mail described some of the unusual things that people had kept for years and finally decided to part with, such as a seven-year-old pregnancy test, a prosthetic leg, cans of expired sardines and a diffused bomb from World War II.
The e-mail then suggested that seeing that a lot of people make New Year’s resolutions to “declutter,” I probably would benefit from doing the same and making a fresh, uncluttered start in 2021.
The e-mail definitely gave me food for thought. My first thought was that I hadn’t “decluttered” anything in about 10 years. In fact, opening closets or cupboards in my house has become so dangerous, I probably should wear a hard-hat to prevent a concussion from low-flying objects.
Still, out of curiosity, I decided to throw caution to the wind and browse through my closets and cupboards to see if I might find something I’d like to part with.
The first thing I noticed was a dress I bought on Carnaby Street during my vacation in England back in 1968. It’s bright orange, has huge puffy sleeves, about 50 buttons down the front, and is so short, there is no possible way to sit in it without inciting someone to start singing a chorus of “I see London, I see France, I see someone’s underpants.” And even if I greased my entire body with lard, I couldn’t squeeze into that dress. Yet I don’t want to part with it. Why not? Sentimentality.
And then there’s the set of Teflon-coated pots and pans I bought way back when I got engaged (and Teflon probably had just been invented). There was a company called Fingerhut back then that would send its products to you and, with no credit check, allow you to make really low time-payments. I think I made payments on those pots and pans for about 11 years.
So maybe there is hardly any Teflon left on them and they are so dented, they look as if I flung them off the top of Mount Washington. And maybe I haven’t used any of them in over 20 years because the flaking Teflon makes everything I cook look as if it’s been loaded with black pepper. So why do I keep the pots and pans? Sentimentality.
Then in my bedroom closet, there’s a big box filled with all of the dance-recital costumes I wore back when I still was in grammar and took dance lessons. There’s my swan costume from Swan Lake, my Mexican Hat Dance costume, complete with a glow-in-the-dark satin sombrero; and my firefly costume with light-up wings. My tap shoes and a pair of castanets also are in the box.
Have I kept these costumes and tap shoes for over 60 years because someday I think I might have a sudden urge to squeeze into the tap shoes and scuff up my floors, or maybe wear the glow-in-the-dark sombrero on a shopping trip to the mall? No. It’s just pure sentimentality.
The biggest amount of clutter, however, is caused by my collection of videotapes. I have videotapes everywhere: in drawers, in boxes under the bed, in cabinets, in Tupperware containers under the kitchen sink, and in paper bags and shoe boxes in closets.
Most of the tapes are so old and brittle I don’t dare put them into a VCR for fear they instantly will disintegrate. And that’s another problem…I don’t even own a VCR any more. A lot of the tapes contain TV shows and movies I recorded but never got around to watching, like the final episode of Cheers and the 1988 Miss America pageant.
The rest of the tapes contain hours of footage of my dogs doing exciting things like yawning or licking themselves, and endless hours of my failed attempts to capture something worthy of sending to America’s Funniest Home Videos.
So why do I keep all of the 4,756 videotapes? Because on one of them, which I forgot to mark, is the TV commercial I created years ago when I won the “Make Your Own TV Commercial” contest sponsored by a discount store called Building 19.
Someday, when I have about 700 hours of free time, I will find a VCR and then fast-forward through all of my videotapes until I locate that commercial, which is less than a minute long. Till then, not even one tape is going to leave my house…not until I locate my original, prize-winning masterpiece. Yes, I have to confess, it’s another case of sentimentality.
So I guess there really is nothing I want to dispose of at the moment that will help me to declutter my house.
Well…actually, there is something…I happened to come across a manila envelope that belonged to my late husband…and it contains photos of all of his ex-girlfriends.
To heck with sentimentality.
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Sally Breslin is an award-winning humor columnist and the author of “There’s a Tick in my Underwear!” “Heed the Predictor,” “The Common-Sense Approach to Dream Interpretation” and “Christmas, a Cabin and a Stranger.” Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
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